September wrap-up

A screen shot of my pedometer stats:

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the silly politics of Drudge

I totally know why Drudge put up this particular photo of Eric Holder:

Sieg Heil, eh? Drudge grabs some awesome headlines and puts them at the forefront of the American public consciousness, but the site's crass attempts at psychological manipulation are often cringe-inducing.


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just a quick thought

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23.5K

Tonight's Namsan hike pushed my step total up to 23,486 steps. I made 20K by midnight and did the remaining 3,500 steps while walking back to my place. Weighed myself after all that sweating and was disappointed to see 119.1 kilograms. I still haven't broken through the 119 mark yet. Part of the problem, I think, is that I hadn't had a decent poop all day: my vegetarian lunch simply refused to leave the confines of my intestines, thus adding a fraction of a kilogram of weight to my results. Maybe I need more fiber. (Which is on the way: I ordered a mess of fiber capsules from iHerb.com, which had a good deal on them.)

One of my students texted me while I was on my way back to my yeogwan. It was after midnight, and the import of her text was that she hadn't bothered to do the homework because she wanted to know how to begin the writing assignment. Silly lass. But she's one of my best students, and she lived in northern Virginia, so I have to forgive her. She's a homegirl.

Perhaps because there was a light rain that fell for most of the daylight hours on Monday, the evening was cool and a bit misty—cool enough, in fact, for me to be able to see my breath for the first time since spring. The rain also brought down plenty of leaves from the trees lining the hiking path: a reminder that fall is here.

I doubled-summited Namsan, as promised, but instead of taking the descending bus road back up to the top, I took the stairs for the second time since mid-August. Once again, I succeeded at climbing the stairs without stopping, although the route seemed much more tiring this time.

I don't know whether I'll hit Namsan tonight (Tuesday). I might just walk to Jongno and back to get my 10K steps in. My September daily step average is guaranteed to be well over 13K steps, even if I do nothing. Perhaps I'll average out at 15K in October. You never know.


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vegetarian meal at the Buddhist university

The faculty cafeteria at Dongguk University serves simple meals for W5,000, but you can also opt for the vegetarian buffet for W7,000. Below, you see a typical plateful of monk-approved goodies, but the Atkins freaks among you will doubtless notice the carby elements hidden among the leafier fare (e.g., the breaded-and-fried chili peppers at 2 o'clock on the plate).

The thing that looks like ground beef (at 12 o'clock) is actually well-cooked (fried?) tofu, I believe. It certainly doesn't feel like meat when I chew on it, but the visual impression of meatiness is powerful enough to wreak havoc in my brain even while I'm masticating. I truly want to believe I'm eating meat. The actual mouth-feel is tough and fibrous—perhaps an attempt at simulating meat's resistance to chewing. From 9 o'clock to almost 12 o'clock on the left side of my plate, you can see a lovely pile of sauced-up nuts and figs—very carby. But oh, so delicious. Korean veggies are in the middle, and a standard Western salad dominates the bottom half of this plate. (I did end up going back for seconds, but not of the porridge.)

Above my plate are (1) a bowl of hobak-juk (i.e., squash/pumpkin porridge) and a cup of raspberry juice (advertised as bokbunja, i.e., raspberries, but the fruits in the juice sure look more like blackberries to me).

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tonight, we double-summit

It's September 29. I have tonight and tomorrow to do what I can to improve my September daily step average, so tonight I'll be double-summiting Namsan. Not sure whether I'll do that tomorrow as well, but at the very least I'll get in my allotted 10K steps. I've already racked up nearly 7K steps today, so by the time I get back home from my trek tonight, I should be close to 20K, if not over that mark. Fingers and tentacles crossed.


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updates have been made

Got my alien-registration card today. That was easy. Wired $850 to my US account, and that sucked because I was charged a mess of fees, such that the total paid was about W930,000. Shinhan Bank also used an exchange rate of W1,060 to the dollar (it's normally about W1,030 these days). So: 1060 x 850 = 901,000. Add W29,000 in fees to that, then PNC Bank will charge me $15 as a "receiving" fee when the money arrives in my account. Wiring money is a big pain in the ass. Also wired W80,000 to my Daegu account so I can keep using my cell phone. (The cell phone was purchased while I was in Hayang and using Daegu Bank, so instead of going through all the paperwork involved in changing my billing over to Shinhan Bank, I instead wire cash to my Daegu Bank account once a month. The bill is closer to W70,000 than to W80,000, but... you know—just to be safe.


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calling it a day

I'm turning in early. Not doing Namsan tonight. I went to work in Daechi-dong today, and now I'm pooped. Tomorrow, I have to head out—early—to the Seoul Immigration Office in Jongno to pick up the Alien Registration Card (ARC) that I'd forgotten to pick up this past Friday. After that, I have to visit the campus bank and wire about $900 back to my US account to cover expenses and pay off a major personal debt. After a not-so-rib-sticking vegetarian lunch, I'll likely hit Namsan in the late evening. My current September average is 13,531 steps per day, which is a 2K increase over August. To maintain that average over the next 50 or so hours, until September bleeds into October, I'll probably do a double-summit of Namsan tomorrow night. For now, though, my knees could use a rest.


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"I know things about pigeons, Lilly"

He does, you know. Know things about pigeons, that is.

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belt-tightening

I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of errands. Because Korean washing machines are inefficient and take nearly two hours to wash a load that ought to be done in under 35 minutes, I dumped a load of laundry into one of the yeogwan's two large machines, then set out on a Baggins-style adventure. My mission: the purchase of (1) an electric fan for my workplace, (2) a huge pack of toilet paper, (3) some garbage bags, and (4) extra belt holes.

My walking path took me toward Gwangjang Market, but to get there, I had to go through Joongbu Market and Bangsan Market first. Right before Joongbu Market is a knickknack store that I've gone to several times; the lady inside is friendly, but occasionally a little goofy. Today, though, there was no goofiness as she sold me my garbage bags. I then walked through Joongbu Market, which used to be covered in scaffolding but which is now, startlingly, half-unscaffolded: the construction crews are finishing up whatever alterations they've wanted to make and are taking down the metal latticework that had given the market its strange, gothic character. I crossed Euljiro Street and stopped at the local Shinhan Bank, where I pulled out W100,000 in anticipation of some heavy-duty purchasing. Once through Bangsan Market, I followed the Cheonggyae Stream over to Jongno 4-ga, where I tracked down the old gent who had sold me my belt about a month or so ago. Found him, too! He was friendly, and he remembered me from before. I explained that I'd been losing weight from all my hiking, and that I needed more belt holes—maybe three more per belt. He took both my belts and gamely punched holes in both of them, scrupulously testing each hole to make sure that the prong fit through the new holes he'd punched. When he was done, I asked him how much I'd have to pay, but he waved his hand and said everything was free. "Come back again when you lose more weight," he joked. I bowed and thanked him profusely, then went over to an empty corner of the sidewalk and put one of my belts back on.

Saints preserve us: I was able to tighten the belt right down to the third new hole! This is ridiculous. I still need to drop another eight or ten inches off my waist, but if the belt is a measure of progress, then this is encouraging news.

With my belt back in place, I walked over to Saeun Electronics Market, which I think of as the Yongsan Electronics Market's retarded little brother. Saeun Market sells much the same stuff, but the area is a bit rougher, grungier, and seedier-looking—more my style. I very quickly found what I was looking for: a place that sold electric fans. At first, I thought about buying a standard-sized fan for my office's desk, but I ultimately decided to purchase a smaller model. The guy at the store (I apologized for interrupting his lunch) showed me a pint-sized fan for W22,000; I bargained him down to W20,000 merely by saying, "Sure you couldn't sell this a little cheaper?"—then smiling cheesily. I had no idea whether such a gambit would work, but it did, so I enjoyed a modest discount of just under ten percent.

With that, I marched back toward my place, buying toilet paper and other household items at Joongbu Market, and right now, I'm still waiting for my laundry to be done. We're over the two-hour mark at this point. That is one slow-ass washing machine.

Once the laundry is hung out to dry, I'm going back out for Part Two of my errands, then I'm heading to campus to grade papers, and I'll end the evening with a walk up the mountain. Probably not a double-summit tonight, as I'll have been walking around town all day.


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terder's ergernder

Terder, Er herve er lert ter der. Foer therngs, erctuerler.

1. Der lerndrer.
2. Ger sherpperng.
3. Fernersh grerderng sterdernt perpers.
4. Herk erp Nermsern.

Translation, for the "er"-impaired:

Today, I have a lot to do. Four things, actually.

1. Do laundry.
2. Go shopping.
3. Finish grading student papers.
4. Hike up Namsan.

Thert erght ter kerp mer berzer fer er wherl.

Don't lie: you know you had fun reading that out loud.


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translating steps to distance

It's taken me a while to do the math on my pedometer, but I seem to have figured some things out regarding the relationship between and among steps, time, and distance.

I walk about a thousand steps every ten minutes, and two thousand steps are about a mile, so every time I make 10K steps, that's five miles. I wish my stride were longer so that I could cover more distance per step, but I seem to be stuck at slightly less than a full yard per step.

So a 20K night of walking is about ten miles, and since I walk at a rate of about 3.2 miles per hour, that's almost exactly a three-hour walk.

Hope that puts my walks in some perspective for you. I'm trudging anywhere from six to ten miles a day (9.7-16.1 km). It's a large investment of time, but until I start switching over to a more intensive, less time-consuming regime, I think it's worth the effort.


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look for an Eastwoodian title

Ayup:

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approx. 21K

Yesterday's double-summiting netted me about 18K steps before midnight and another 3K steps after midnight, for a total of about 21K steps. The descending bus road remains a challenge for me: I breathe hard and sweat buckets as I stomp my way back to the top of the mountain, so I know I'm getting my cardio in. Weight remains at a bit more than 119 kilograms; I feel as if I may be plateauing there. Something's gotta give.


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"must-read"

With thanks to Malcolm, whose tweet on this was the first I saw of it, I present a link to an article by a Jesuit* priest, the Reverend James V. Schall, SJ, that analyzes Islam, its relationship with terrorism, and the question of how seriously to take the Islamic State. Schall writes, provocatively:

Is terror intrinsic to Islam?

What I want to propose here is an opinion. An opinion is a position that sees the plausibility but not certainty of a given proposition. But I think this opinion is well-grounded and makes more sense both of historic and of present Islam than most of the other views that are prevalent. I do not conceive this reflection as definitive. Nor do I document it in any formal sense, though it can be. It is a view that, paradoxically, has, I think, more respect for Islam than most of its current critics or advocates.

This comment is an apologia, as it were, for the Islamic State at least in the sense that it accepts its sincerity and religious purpose. It understands how, in its own terms, the philosophic background that enhances its view does, in its own terms, justify its actions, including the violent ones.

The Islamic State and the broader jihadist movements throughout the world that agree with it are, I think, correct in their basic understanding of Islam. Plenty of evidence is found, both in the long history of early Muslim military expansion and in its theoretical interpretation of the Qur’an itself, to conclude that the Islamic State and its sympathizers have it basically right. The purpose of Islam, with the often violent means it can and does use to accomplish it, is to extend its rule, in the name of Allah, to all the world. The world cannot be at “peace” until it is all Muslim. The “terror” we see does not primarily arise from modern totalitarian theories, nationalism, or from anywhere else but what is considered, on objective evidence, to be a faithful reading of a mission assigned by Allah to the Islamic world, which has been itself largely procrastinating about fulfilling its assigned mission.

To look elsewhere for an explanation is simply not to see what the Islamic State and its friends are telling us about why they act as they do. The tendency among pragmatic Western thinkers, locked into their own narrow views, is to exclude any such motivation as an excuse of raw power. This view shows the intellectual shortcomings of Western leaders and the narrowness of much Western thought.

[emphasis added]

This question—the question of the extent to which Islam and Islamism** are synonymous—has been batted about by several of the blogs on my daily reading list, Malcolm and Jeff foremost among them. Their thoughts on the matter are worth your while. I've written very little on the subject because I consider myself rather poorly-read when it comes to Islam, its history, and its doctrines. I know enough about the religion to write perhaps a 2- or 3-page essay on the topic, and that would pretty much exhaust my knowledge.

That said, my impression, especially after having read both Bernard Lewis on the right and Edward Said on the left, is that we're reaching a point, in Western discourse, where it's becoming increasingly hard to deny that there exists, if not an absolute identity, then at least an extreme overlapping of the concepts of Islam and Islamism. I'm still not willing to concede that Islam can be boiled down to an essence: my own experience with Muslims in America (I had quite a few Muslim students in my tutoring job at YB in Centreville, Virginia—along with Hindus, Jains, Christians, atheists, and spiritual-not-religious) leads me to believe that a kinder, more open, and sincerely skeptical form of Islam does indeed exist, but that it doesn't make itself well-known at the level of public discourse. And that is truly unfortunate. People en masse are stupid, and if the moderate Islam that I'm referring to exists only at the broken, scattered level of private belief, it will never become an opposing force against Islamism. (But if moderate Islam did become a countervailing force, wouldn't it also become subject to the stupid-en-masse rule?)

If the argument that Islam = Islamism wins in the West, this conclusion will lead to a very narrow set of possible actions, the genocide of Muslims among them. Dr. Charles B. Jones of Catholic University, my old mentor, explained the alternatives in his book The View from Mars Hill (which I reviewed here in 2006). The possibilities in religious conflict, according to Jones, are threefold:

1. elimination
2. containment
3. expulsion

The West, in its current state, is too squeamish to opt openly for elimination, because that would be advocating genocide—a repeat of the Holocaust, but on a different group of people, many of whom will be innocent parties and undeserving of such a fate. That leaves, for the West, the options of containment and expulsion, and of those two, I'd assume that containment is the more feasible alternative. How containment would work, in practical terms, is the question of the day, but I assume it's going to have something to do with major changes in immigration law. Perhaps one interview question for potential immigrants might be the one that David Horowitz asks at every campus he visits: "Will you condemn Hamas here and now?" Any hesitation on the question, or any refusal to condemn Hamas, could be grounds for automatic rejection.

A thornier question is that of the role of religious jurisprudence vis-à-vis the law of the land. Muslims are correct when they judge it unfair for non-Muslim Westerners to claim that Muslims should have no right to practice sharia in their own communities: Catholics have canon law; we Presbyterians (PCUSA) have The Book of Order, etc. Many matters that could be settled in a secular court are often settled "in-house," so to speak, within the context of the religious institution—up to and including matters of sexual misconduct. It's not so easy to say to Muslims, then, that sharia should simply be banned. As a matter of fairness, if you ban religious jurisprudence for Muslims, you have to ban it for everybody.

The flip-side of this question focuses mainly on the law of the land. Take, for example, the case of the Muslim women who refuse to unveil themselves to take American driver's-license ID photos. My own sympathies are with the law of the land on this one: sorry, ladies, but your tradition and religious tenets should take a back seat when it comes to public safety. In this sense, I'm sympathetic to the French notion of laïcité, or secularism, which essentially says the law of the land prevails in all instances in which religious law and secular law are in conflict. But there are aspects of laïcité that rub me the wrong way as an American: should a high-school girl wearing a crucifix pendant be forbidden from doing so? So this question, the question of church and state, is still unsettled in my mind.

I need to digest Schall's article, but in the meantime I pass it along to you. I might write further on this topic later, but I'm sure that better blogospheric minds than mine will be on the case soon enough.

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*To me, the term "Jesuit" is synonymous with "badass scholar." I'm committing the genetic fallacy, to be sure, but I automatically, implicitly trust just about anything written by a thoughtful Jesuit. Most of these guys are toting around two and three Ph.D.s, and they've spent their lives at the forefront, in many cases, of Catholic mission work, which has put them in real-life contact with different cultures and traditions all over the world. There's experience there to back up all the theorizing and contemplation, all supported by the Ingatian ideals of free inquiry and skepticism. The Society of Jesus doesn't churn out dummies, and when a learned Jesuit talks, I listen.

**I take Islam and Islamism to be defined in contrast with each other: Islam refers to what people consider best about that religion: its peaceful values, its universalist attitude regarding God's mercy and compassion, its scholastic hunger for knowledge and discovery, its ability to produce works of high art and high culture. Islamism, on the other hand, refers primarily to a barbarous, primitive, intolerant, hegemonic ideology that uses terrorism as a tool to sway minds and dominate lands.


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am I a super-recognizer?

Thanks to Malcolm, who recently published a smorgasbord of links, I took this facial-recognition test and got the following results:

69 out of what, eh?

The site says, on the test-results page, that the team is still gathering data and thus has no way, at present, of interpreting the collected information. I'll venture a guess, though, as to what these test results might be saying about one's personality: if the question is, "To what degree do you treat people as unique individuals?", then I think this test might actually provide some relevant data. The ability to recognize difference and uniqueness among faces is a sign of a person's willingness, I think, to treat those people as special individuals—to see the Other as human, and not merely as a member of a group, tribe, or other category. To understand what I mean, think for a moment about the inability to distinguish one face from another—to see all people as merely "faces in a crowd," as tokens of a type, each bleeding unrecognizably into the next, with no real separation or differentiation.

I'm not all that good at associating names with faces, though, and that fact could be damaging to my hypothesis. I normally need to see a face and hear a name several times before I finally begin to be able to name people that I meet (this is a problem when it comes to memorizing my students' names).

Perhaps that ought to be the next phase of this study: a test not only of facial recognition but also of name-recall and name-association (i.e., putting a name to a face). It might also be worthwhile to do the test, not so much with computer-generated faces shown in artificial lighting conditions as with actual human faces shown in natural lighting conditions.

One wonders what all of this is leading up to.



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when December comes

My buddy Tom sent me the following poster for the event to surpass all events in sheer, unbridled testicularity:

That's right, young virgins: Tenacious D is coming to Seoul (or is it coming on Seoul?) this coming December. See? Everything and everyone is coming.

I joked to Tom that he and I would be the only ones at the concert, but that this might be a fine opportunity for a photo op with Jack and Rage.*


Jack Black has humorously called his two-man comic-rock act "a Smothers Brothers for the Dungeons and Dragons misfits set." That sounds about right. And there's a slim chance that I might be in attendance, despite my normal avoidance of all things concert-like (the last concert I went to was Clapton in the 1980s... I came out of that experience very deaf and a little high). If I go, I'm definitely going to see if I can corner Jack and Kyle and get them either to sign something or to pose for a shot (preferably a shot of them signing something). I might actually give my autograph to them, come to think of it. Or we could trade autographs, and get that moment on camera.

The possibilities are as endless and mysterious as my scrote-wrinkles. J and K are two of my favorite celebrities; at the very least, it'd be nice to watch them perform. And if Tom deigns to accompany me to this pagan festival, well—the more, the merrier.

So, yeah: a definite maybe for this concert. And now, some of my favorite D lyrics:

FUCK HER GENTLY

This is a song for the ladies
But, fellas: listen closely

You don't always have to fuck her hard
In fact, sometimes that's not right to do:
Sometimes you've got to make some love
And fuckin' give her some smooches, too

Sometimes ya' got to squeeze
Sometimes ya' got to say please
Sometime ya' got to say hey
I'm gonna fuck you—softly
I'monna screw you gently
I'monna hump you sweetly
I'monna ball you discreetly

And then you say, "Hey I bought you flowers."
And then you say, "Wait a minute, Sally—
"I think I got somethin' in my teeth
"Could you get it out for me?"
That's fuckin' teamwork!

What's your fav'rite posish?
That's cool with me
It's not my favorite
But I'll do it for you
What's your favorite dish?
I'm not gonna cook it
But I'll order it from Zanzibar

And then I'monna love you completely
And then I'll fuckin' fuck you discreetly
And then I'll fuckin' bone you completely
But then... I'monna fuuuuuuck yooooooouuuuu haaaaaaaaaaaard
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaard

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*Jack Black's partner in crime, the talented Kyle Gass, goes by many nicknames: "K.G." is one, and because of how "K.G." sounds when said out loud, "Cage" is another. "Cage" then leads to "Rage." So call him Kyle, K.G., Cage, or Rage, and summon him out of his demon-hole.


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23.6K

I managed 23,608 steps before midnight, walking 10.9 miles and burning 1610 calories, according to my pedometer. Given the fact that my only meal, on Tuesday, was a vegetarian buffet, this may be the first time in Hominid history that I managed to burn more calories through exercise than I took in through eating. I seriously doubt that my plateful of vegetables amounted to 1600 calories, so it's entirely conceivable that I burned up my entire meal through hiking.

And that's a good feeling.


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you know what time it is

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tonight, my love, we double-summit

I've taken to following the example of one of my coworkers, who says she often lunches at the vegetarian buffet in the faculty cafeteria. Been there twice, now. Grazed. It's not exactly satisfying, given the lack of animal flesh, but the buffet-makers do try to put out meat analogues, especially in the form of tofu. And fortunately or unfortunately, there's no shortage of carbs: today, for example, one of the dishes at the buffet table was a vegetarian ddeokbokgi, of which I partook only a little. Also on the table was a breaded and deep-fried seaweed wrap whose filling was cellophane noodles. More carbs. But there was, to compensate for the badness, an abundance of leafy green goodness in the form of Western- and Korean-style salads. So all in all, the buffet offered a little bit of everything. I especially liked today's marinated-and-grilled lotus root, which tasted incredibly good. Here's hoping that that dish comes back again soon.

The last time I lunched at the vegetarian buffet, I broke down later on and got myself a junky dinner from the local convenience store—anything to fill me up, given that vegetables digest so quickly. Tonight, I'm forgoing dinner in favor of walking up the mountain twice: I've got a lot of anger to work out (expect a "frank" post later), so I imagine I'll be tromping along pretty energetically, making up for the steps I didn't get in yesterday. I'm aiming to reach 20K steps; I've already racked up 9,070 steps today, just from my usual to-and-fro on campus, so I expect to hit 20K by the time I'm starting downhill after having summited once.

My brother's suggestion to me, before he left Korea, was for me to avoid eating anything after 7PM and to cut out sodas completely. I admit that sodas are one of my several addictions, and weaning myself off them is going to be a bitch. But if I'm interested in not plateauing with the weight, then the sodas do need to go (and replacing them with sugary fruit juices is definitely not kosher). I think I've gotten to a point where I also need to start incorporating actual weight training into my routine; I may have to consult my friend Sperwer on that subject. Larger muscles mean a higher metabolic rate, which in turn translates to more fat-burning. I've still got my old physical goals in mind: the ability to do X number of pullups, pushups, and situps, for example. These goals are, at the moment, unattainable, but as I whittle away at my walrus-like form, they will eventually move into the realm of possibility.

Still, first things first: the mountain awaits.


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my new flag

Watch for this:

Clint Eastwood played Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan in Wolfgang Petersen's 1993 "In the Line of Fire," one of Eastwood's best roles.

Frank—get it? I'll be using this image to flag my you-know-whats from now on.


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storm a-comin'

People are saying there's a typhoon heading toward Korea and that it'll be hitting sometime tonight. My immediate thought was to wonder how this would affect my Namsan hike, but if the Weather.com site is any indication, I ought to encounter little to no precipitation during my walk. Tomorrow (Wednesday), though, is going to be shitty. Luckily, I'll be working in an office all day, but tomorrow's Namsan hike might not be very pleasant.


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never again

I'm an exacting grader when it comes to writing. The problem with being so picky, though, is that it takes a million years to wade through sixty or eighty student essays. Over the past few days, I spent about eight hours—almost two hours per class—grading student writing. Tonight was the final paroxysm: it took me four hours to get two batches of papers done. I worked until midnight and was cross-eyed by the end. On each student's paper, I circled, underlined, scratched out, annotated, and listed. I complained about formatting ("Please double-space from now on!"); I zinged students for poor capitalization, punctuation, verb-tense control, singular/plural errors, subject/verb-agreement errors, diction errors, incorrect use of italics, incorrect use of relative pronouns, dropped articles, faulty parallelism, and all the other sins for which Korean students are infamous.

That was a fuck of a lot of work. So: never again! If someone were conducting a time-and-motion study, that person would conclude that I was being woefully inefficient. To which I'd reply: inefficient, maybe, but definitely thorough, unlike those chumps who breeze obliviously through writing assignments while not really paying attention to the nitty-gritty details.

My alternative strategy? Now that the students have some idea of what sorts of errors I'll catch, I will instead merely circle or otherwise highlight errors as I find them, leaving it up to the students to figure out where they went wrong. If I can get my productivity to the point where I'm grading an essay every two minutes, that's about 36 minutes per class and less than 160 minutes of grading in total. That would put me at under three hours for four batches of papers, and I could use the extra twenty or so minutes to write up and upload an omnibus "error sheet" for all the classes to peruse (as I did with this most recent batch of student papers). Much faster that way.

What pisses me off most is that all this grading kept me from walking Namsan tonight. I stayed at the office long enough to encounter the nighttime security guard, who asked me to lock up when I left. I told him about my ID card's problem: I can use the card to get into our faculty office when it's locked, but I can't lock up when I leave. He sighed and told me to turn the lights and A/C off when I left. I imagine that he's the guy who's been closing up after I leave at night. I really need for my card to be fixed: this is posing a security hazard. I'm beginning to think the card is defective and needs to be exchanged for a new one. The office has tried three times now to fix the damn thing, to no avail. This is getting stupid.


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Itaewon's final kick in the ass

As I was riding the subway back to my place from Itaewon, I noticed two twenty-something women standing on the other side of the subway car. One had her arms draped limply over the shoulders of her friend, and her head was bowed at a miserable angle. At first I thought she was crying about something, but it soon became obvious that, far from being sad, the drooping woman was incredibly drunk—so drunk that the only reason she was standing was that she had locked her knees. It was around 7PM. The night starts early for some people, it seems.

A stop or two after I had noticed this odd couple, the doors opened at my intended stop (Yaksu Station), and the sober friend attempted to coax her drunken companion out of the subway. But the inebriated woman's legs were locked: she couldn't move to save her life. The sober lady, still awkwardly hugging the drunk lady, tried to move toward the door, and I knew this would only end in disaster. Sure enough, the drunk lady leaned farther and farther, unwilling or unable to move her feet, until the angle was so steep that she began to collapse onto the ground, halfway in and halfway out of the subway. The situation was bizarre and funny and pathetic all at the same time. I and a couple other people went over to try to help the ladies out of the train; the drunk lady, far heavier than she looked, ended up collapsing under her own weight, but her right hand still stubbornly gripped one of the shiny metal bars inside the subway car. I pried her hand off the bar; she collapsed the rest of the way to the ground, and I did what I could to catch her. Someone called out, "Her shoe!" and I saw that the drunk woman's foot was caught between the subway car and the concrete platform. Someone else raced up and pulled her foot out of danger.

But we weren't done yet. The woman had been pulled partway out of the subway, but her legs were still inside the range of the platform's "suicide doors," those huge, sliding double doors meant to keep wannabe jumpers from leaping onto the tracks whenever a subway arrives. The drunk lady's friend scooped her companion's legs out of the way, then hooked her arms under her shoulders and dragged her a foot or two onto the platform, a safe distance away from the train. The train doors and the suicide doors closed; the train pulled away. A small knot of spectators just stood there, stupidly watching this tableau. I floated nearby, not quite sure whether to call for emergency services, until I saw the drunk woman somehow get her feet under her and stand. I shrugged and walked off, melting into the crowd.

This incident felt like Itaewon's way of saying, "And don't come back!" It was a fitting capper to an otherwise unpleasant evening out on the town. I love you, too, Itaewon.


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weight loss

Click on the following graph to enlarge the image. The graph charts my progress from June of 2013—before I moved back to Korea—to September 2014, i.e., this very month.

As I've said before, I started off very fat, so there's really no visible difference on my frame, despite the loss of 15 kilograms, or over 30 pounds. Overweight is overweight. It won't be until I lose another thirty kilos that I'll finally start to look thinner. By then, I'll be down to where I was in 1989, back when I was a college junior, hiking every day in Switzerland.

The huge gap in the middle of the graph roughly corresponds to the months during which I was suffering from hip pain.



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to make the world a happier place

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too good to be true

At Dongguk University, I have three immediate bosses. I don't know whether they actually describe themselves as bosses, but they're billed as "head teachers," for what it's worth, and we're to pose our professional questions either to them or to the office assistants in our department's main office. I sat down at lunch with one boss two days ago, and we talked about the ins and outs of the program we're teaching. Remembering an issue I had brought up on the blog recently, I asked my boss about pay: was my first month's payment just a little too good to be true? He seemed to think so: instead of 2.7 million won, one's normal pay ought to be around 2.5 million won once insurance and pension deductions kick in. So I was right to think that 2.7 million was a bit much, and I'll have to adjust my budget accordingly. Frak.


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reasons to dislike Itaewon

As I had threatened earlier, I took my trip into Itaewon today. Here are a few things I can't stand about the district.

1. Fellow expats. I didn't come to Korea to hang out with expats. True, the small handful of close friends that I've made here includes two or three expats, and I freely acknowledge that it's often nice to share insights with someone whose worldview dovetails, more or less, with your own. That said, I really have little use for most expats. Part of this is GOMAS: I selfishly want to feel that my adventure in Korea is unique. Part of this is my resentment of people in America who refuse to make any effort to assimilate into the larger culture; seeing Americans acting the same way here as foreign expats do in America just rankles me and erodes whatever traces remain in my head of the cherished-but-obviously-mythical narrative of American exceptionalism. Americans follow the "birds of a feather" rule just like everyone else.

2. Skyrocketing prices. Barely a year ago, a döner kebab at Sultan Kebab in Itaewon cost only W3,000 per tiny wrap sandwich. Now, the price is W6,000. My wallet spent all evening complaining about how painful and bloody its asshole was after dinner. There's a sock store at the edge of Itaewon, near the Noksapyeong side, that used to sell plastic packages of socks for W10,000 a package (ten pairs of socks in each package). Now: W18,000 for the same fucking package. That's roughly the same inflation rate as Sultan Kebab's. It's because of bullshit like this that people are increasingly turning to iHerb (website here; Charles recently wrote about it here, but I'd heard about iHerb last year from my buddy Tom, who sang its praises for its cheap, fast overseas delivery of a variety of "healthy" products), which offers reasonably priced items that expats can't find elsewhere. (I'll be hitting iHerb up for psyllium fiber.)

3. Annoyingly pushy Korean salesmen. I'm a large guy, but I don't need to be reminded of how large I am by Korean guys standing in front of big-and-tall stores who boom out, "Big clothes? You need big clothes?" The quickest way to get me to avoid your establishment is to try the hard sell on me. I did end up inside a keunot-jeom (big-and-tall clothing store), where I bought a shirt... for W35,000. See (2) above. My wallet was positively weeping by this point. It curled into a fetal position and refused to leave my pocket ever again.

4. Ho fashion. Is it my imagination, or is Itaewon a magnet for sluts and slut wannabes? I'm all for the tasteful revelation of the female form, but a never-ending cavalcade of scrawny little East Asian asses packed into tight jeans and miniskirts can quickly result in sensory overload. Tonight, I heard the Jesus freaks singing pious songs in front of the Hamilton Hotel, and I almost sympathized with them: they had obviously figured Itaewon to be Korea's own Babylon, and judging by all the crotches on display—all the ambient crotchality—I'd say they weren't far wrong. Maybe I'm just turning into a bitter, sexless old prude.

5. Saturday crowds. Itaewon is packed on Saturdays. I had forgotten that fact, mainly because I've tended to visit Itaewon during its off-days and off-hours. Today, I was on the main drag right at dinnertime—probably the very worst time to be there. I hate to say this, but I'd almost rather be walking the crowded streets of Gangnam than weaving my bulky way through the seedy masses in Itaewon.

Itaewon's attraction, for me, boils down to two things: (1) items that I can't find anywhere else, and (2) Western or other styles of international food. I agree with my friends that Itaewon has improved in terms of its no longer being quite the wretched hive of scum and villainy that it used to be, but I still fail to see its appeal. I go there only if I have to, and then only grudgingly.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I was pissed off to discover that one international store was closed this evening. I'm pretty sure the place is run by local Muslims—Pakistanis or Bangladeshis—which ought to mean the store should have been open, since the Muslim holy day is Friday, not Saturday. I had wanted to hit this store because I knew it had powdered Metamucil; I recently ran out of the Metamucil that Tom had given me a month before. I knew, too, that the price for this Metamucil would be exorbitant, but I was willing to pay more for the convenience of immediate availability. Since the store was closed, I chose instead to order fiber tablets from iHerb, which has a deal on fiber tablets that rivals the cheap prices I had enjoyed when shopping at Target while living in Front Royal, Virginia.


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a magic moment

Brought to you by my brother David:

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lively art

Seoul doesn't have much of a graffiti culture. Truly impressive instances of artistic vandalism are few and far between. Switzerland, by contrast, has some creative artistic terrorists; I remember seeing gorgeous street art in places like Interlaken and Zürich. But tonight, in the very neighborhood in which I now live, barely 200 meters from my residence, I saw a graffito that I found both striking and enthralling. Behold (click image to enlarge):

Not bad, eh? I wish there were more art like this.


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24.3K

I walked a hell of a lot tonight: 24.3K steps, which is, according to my pedometer, approximately 11.3 miles (18.23 km). I double-summited Namsan; because I started late, 17,446 steps were walked before midnight, and the remaining 6,842 steps were walked after midnight. Namsan had delightfully few tourists at that time of night, which made for some peaceful walking. Leaves are starting to fall on the mountain roads as well: a harbinger of autumn. By the time I was leaving Namsan's summit for the second time, it was late enough for the crews to have turned off the massive lights that normally illuminate Seoul Tower. The imposing structure—Seoul's most prominent phallic symbol—loomed there in the semi-dark, limned by ambient light pollution from the city below, and ringed with vestigial illumination from the dimmed lights inside the revolving restaurant near the top of the tower. I stared at the darkened column a bit before making my way back down to street level.

Saturday morning, I'm doing laundry and then off to the dreaded Itaewon to do some shopping that can't be done anywhere else. I resent the fact that certain Western products aren't available in Korean stores for reasonable prices, thus making Itaewon trips a necessity. I think my dislike for Itaewon has little to do with its formerly pervasive seediness: for me, the major sticking point has always been that Itaewon is Expat Central, and I just don't want to be hanging around crowds of my own kind. I resent such clannish, balkanizing behavior when I see it in America; I have no love for it when I see it here in Korea, either. So I'll swoop into Itaewon, do my shopping, then get the fuck out as soon as possible.


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looking like "Nae"

Drudge is currently displaying a 54/46 split in favor of "No" for the Scottish referendum on the question, "Should Scotland be an independent country?" These are just the initial results, but I doubt the complete tally will be much different.

I'll admit to feeling disappointed. I think the Scots may realize that being hooked into the UK's life-support system, and thus remaining dependent, is an easier route than taking the bold, risky step of unplugging the country from Great Britain. A more charitable explanation could be that the wisdom of the masses has prevailed, and the Scots see no good reason to sunder a union that has been mutually beneficial for centuries.

End result: Scotland dependent. The spirit of William Wallace will just have to bide its time.

BBC real-time updates on the referendum can be found here. I'll be checking.

UPDATE: More specifically, check here for real-time updates as the polls close in each region. Orkney and Shetland were big-time "No"s, I see. Many of the regions that have already reported in are close in their votes, but from what I gather, every single voting district, close or not, has voted "No." At this point, I'd say the Scots have spoken. The prevailing opinion is either "No" or "Hell, no."


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no Namsan tonight

Taking a break. I did over 20K steps yesterday, and today I felt inordinately tired, so I'm taking a break from Namsan. Tomorrow, Friday, I'll do double duty. Today, I'll content myself with the 6,000 steps I walked over the course of a normal business day at Dongguk. My per-day average for the month of September is still over 13K steps, so I'm well above my July and August averages. I think I can afford to slack off a tiny bit.

In other news: I really need to get new holes punched into my belts. I've gotten to a point where my pants are starting to fall down, even with my belts cinched as tightly as possible. It's crazy. I'm at 119 kilograms; another 6 kilos and I'll be at 113 kg, which is around 250 pounds—another milestone, and a return to my 2006 weight while at Sookmyung Women's University. Hard to believe I'm now this close to 250. I still look fat, of course; that won't change until I'm down to an even 200 pounds, I think—and 200 pounds (91 kg) would be my 1990 weight.


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lunch at the Golden Goose

The basement of the building in Daechi-dong that houses the Golden Goose has an array of restaurants in it. Most of the restos are Korean-style, but there's at least one faux-Japanese eatery that had been recommended to me by a coworker. I went there this past Wednesday and was pleasantly surprised by the meal I received (click on image to magnify):

Alas, I had to rush through the meal because I had spent most of my lunch break at the local Shinhan Bank, arranging an international transfer. I'll be sure to eat at this place again soon, though. The food was pretty good, and the meat was fresh from the fryer.


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place your bets

Will Scotland vote "Aye" or "Nae"? I've become, like most of the rest of the civilized world, keenly interested in this question. I recently asked an Irish coworker for his thoughts on Scottish independence, given that the Republic of Ireland has enjoyed independence from Britain since at least the late 1940s, when the Republic of Ireland officially became the Republic of Ireland after having been the Irish Free State. My colleague said he had his doubts and thought that independence was a bad idea. "We [Irish] messed it up," he sighed. He also noted that, in terms of the practical reality in Ireland, not much actually changed with the advent of independence. The economy still was what it was; the citizens still did what they did. Life went on. The same would be true, analogously, for Scotland.

I admit there's a romantic part of me that hopes Scotland will vote "yes" at this referendum. The Scots have fought and yearned for independence for centuries; actor Sean Connery, a loud and longtime supporter of a free Scotland, doubtless hopes to see Scottish independence become a reality in his lifetime. What a thing of beauty it would be, to be Scottish and to know that one was standing on free Scottish ground, breathing free Scottish air—to be, at long last, a true Scotsman, beholden to no one! It's an exhilarating thought.

At the same time, I know that independence comes with drawbacks. I've read around and am aware of the issues: which currency to adopt? How much of the British national debt to shoulder? Wither the Scottish military? How about those oil fields in the North Sea? And what of regional politics—how will Scotland relate to the UK? To the EU? These are enormously important issues, and a headlong plunge into freedom would bring all of them to a head.

But before we worry ourselves to death, it's important to remember that today is merely a referendum—a massive polling of the people's sentiment, not an official vote to cast off the UK forever. The question being put to the Scots is this: "Should Scotland be an independent country?" It's a straightforward query, phrased in the conditional tense ("should," not "shall"), which means it's still just hypothetical. So don't fret: there won't be a breakup anytime soon.

There's an article that says it would be better for the Scots to leave the UK because the UK Parliament would finally be able to swing back to the center once all those damn leftist Scottish representatives have departed. It's true that Scotland, as a nation, swings way, way left—a fact that I find unfortunate. I'd like to think of the Scots as fierce individualists, not as weak-kneed, bitchy little nanny-staters, but apparently that's the face of modern Scotland. If given the chance, the country of William Wallace might swing far enough left to become an echo of France, its neighbor to the south. That's my greatest worry for an independent Scotland: extreme leftism could be the road to national suicide. My own feeling is that leftism has its place as one half of a balanced system—both left and right—that enjoys a certain dynamic tension. Scotland, unbalanced, could easily go over the cliff.

That danger aside, I do still hope the Scots vote "yes." It would be a wake-up call for the UK, even if nothing were to come of it. As some writers have argued, a breakup is inevitable, anyway, because most of Europe (not to mention other parts of the world) is experiencing a sort of "breakup fever" these days, as separatists in different countries agitate for their own independence. And that's why, right at this moment, all eyes are on Scotland. If the Scots vote "yes," they'll be setting an example that shows how a civilized country fights for its freedom in a bloodless, nonviolent way. I seriously doubt that things would be so civilized in the Middle East or in Asia, if such a struggle for independence were to occur. (And it's a marvel to ponder that the Scots themselves are now civilized enough to put down their claymores and battleaxes in order to have a referendum!)

If I were a betting man, I'd bet that the referendum ends with a "yes" vote—not by a huge margin, but just barely: maybe 52% "yes" to 48% "no." The vote could go two ways: either the Scots end up cowed by the enormity of the potential problems associated with independence, and they chicken out at the last moment... or they become so excited, so filled with enthusiasm about the the very notion of independence that, in a paroxysm of nationalistic pride, they loudly vote "yes."

So that's my bet: a "yes" vote for Scottish independence. The idea is just too compelling.

UPDATE: Mike leans "nae." Malcolm leans "aye."


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being paid feels good

Three good things I learned today:

(1) The very nice, very cute Shinhan Bank teller in Daechi-dong told me that I can now go to any Shinhan Bank and expeditiously do an international transfer. I did have to start the application process from scratch, not only because it had been several years since the last time I had used Shinhan for international wire transfers, but also because I had changed my passport number in the interim: my old passport expired while I was in the States, so when I re-upped for a new passport, I was given a new passport number. It also didn't help that I didn't have my alien-registration card (ARC); normally, that's the piece of ID that Korean banks want to see. My ARC is still somewhere in the bowels of Immigration; I can't pick the card up until Friday, September 26. But the good news is that I just need to bring my passport to any Shinhan branch, and I can wire money to the States quickly and easily from now on.

(2) My Dongguk pay was W400,000 more than I'd expected to get. Based on my experience with salary deductions at my previous job, I had expected to receive only 80% of my gross salary—about 2.3 million won. Instead, I received 2.7 million won, which was a very welcome surprise. There's still a chance, though, that this first payment is an anomaly; as I recall, that was the case at my previous place of work (there was also a month in which extra deductions were taken out of my pay, thus evening my average monthly payments out). So until I see three months in a row at 2.7 million won, I'm not going to breathe easy.

(3) My Golden Goose pay, which still hasn't arrived, will be for a full million. That's W200,000 more per month than I was expecting, so I'm certainly not complaining. If things really are as peachy as they now seem, this means I'm getting W600,000 a month more than I had budgeted for. The Golden Goose has also asked me to show up for work this Saturday, as there's a publication deadline that needs to be met. More work = more pay.

So I did a bit of shopping today; there's more shopping yet to do, but for the moment I'm just glad to have a measure of purchasing power again. Oh, yes: I also immediately paid off two personal debts today, and I'll pay my yeogwan hosts tonight when I leave the campus office (yes: I went straight from Daechi-dong to Dongguk campus, where I'm now writing this entry). When the Golden Goose finally pays me—within the next few days, I hope—I'll discharge another two personal debts. In October, another two... and in November, I'll pay my last remaining personal debt, thank Cthulhu. After that, I can finally start saving up key money for a decent apartment. And after that, sometime next year, I'll be able to begin paying down my real debts in earnest. Assuming Dongguk doesn't fire my ass.


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PAYDAY IS HERE!

I get paid today. Cue Monty Python ass-trumpets, furiously humping angels, and an avalanche of blubbery male nipples. This is going to be a bit weird: normally, when I get paid by my university (still no payment from the Golden Goose, alas), I go right to the bank the same day and transfer 80% of my income to my American bank account. But because today is Wednesday, I'll be at the Golden Goose, which means I'll be doing the wire transfer at the Shinhan Bank in Daechi-dong, not the Shinhan Bank on my campus. That's a bit of a pain in the ass, because the first time I do a wire transfer at any given bank, there's always a ton of paperwork and the process takes forever. So I'm sacrificing my lunch hour tomorrow, just to make sure my US bank account is replenished on time. When I get paid on October 17, that'll be a Friday, which means I'll have to do the wire transfer from the campus branch of Shinhan, which in turn means I'll have to do all that damn paperwork over again from square one (unless it turns out that all the branches are connected, and paperwork for one branch applies to all branches... but that's a little too much to hope for, because that would actually make sense, and this is Korea, home of the non-linear).

I suppose I'll be sending my standard $1,200-$1,400 over to America. Since I now work for a place that pays a larger salary, I expect to keep a little bit extra... but W400,000 of that extra will be claimed by my yeogwan as living expenses (because you just can't fucking win). When the Golden Goose finally pays me its cool million won minus taxes and other deductions (I'm expecting about W800,000), some of that money will also go overseas, and some will be sent to creditors here in Korea. Within two months, I ought to have most of my creditors paid off. If I decide to protract the pain one extra month, I can pay off one final creditor, which means it'll take thirteen months for me to amass the money needed to make a down payment on a decent apartment. I'm not sure what my circumstances will be a year from now. I may have shifted fully over to the Golden Goose by then, earning a cool 4 million won a month for starters (with an eventual shift up to W5 million). Much depends on how well I like teaching at Dongguk. If my students give me suck-ass evaluations, I won't feel welcome and I'll happily leave for greener pastures. If, on the other hand, I rock and roll on my evals, I might just stay another year and keep the Golden Goose on the side as part-time work.

But back to the here and now. Payday comes as an enormous relief. I'll have a wee bit of breathing room and will finally be able to make some necessary purchases. That's certainly something to be thankful for. The curve has reached its inflection point and will now swing upward. Thank Christ for that, eh?


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frankly speaking, 9/16/14

Another "frankly speaking" post is up. I'm going to have to figure out a different way to alert people to the existence of these posts. Either that, or I should just advise my readers to check back every few days for updates.


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divine meddling

Saw this on Drudge and thought it worth copying and pasting here:

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caution: knees

I'm going to have to take it easy on the downhills. Tonight, for the first time, I felt the strain on my knees as I pounded my way back down from the top of Namsan to the bus parking lot just below the summit. The pain was a possible harbinger of agony to come if I don't watch myself. Running downhill is an impossible, laughable prospect: I'd end up like Bruce Wayne in "The Dark Knight Rises," utterly without knee cartilage and needing a robotic splint to hold my leg together so I could deliver powerful side kicks.

I started out late tonight, but ended up with over 15K steps before midnight rolled around. We new faculty members received our ID cards yesterday afternoon, and I had wanted to see whether mine would work to open locked doors on campus at night. Unfortunately, I discovered—even before my nighttime walk—that my card didn't work: it was after 7PM when I left the faculty office, and I had wanted to lock up. Locking up requires a working ID card to set the door alarm, but when I touched my card to the sensor plate, a computer voice told me flatly that my card was "disallowed" (heoyong dwaejiantseumnida). So I need to run my card by our intrepid office assistant Tuesday afternoon; here's hoping things are fixed by close of business the same day. (It might behoove our office staff to test the ID cards, to see whether they work, before they actually issue them to us. Having to go back to get the card checked amounts to wasted time and effort.)

Aging, as they say, is no fun. As I get older, I find there are more and more things I need to watch out for. Now I have to add my knees to that list.


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frankly speaking, 9/15/14

A new "frankly speaking" post is up in the usual spot.


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the review I fear to write

Many moons ago, I purchased the Wachowski/Tykwer film "Cloud Atlas," and only last week got around to watching it. The movie is a hodgepodge of both the excellent and the execrable, but as is the Wachowskis' wont, it's primarily an idea film, and on that level, I have much to say about it. Trouble is, I have so much to say about it that I'm pretty sure the review is going to bloat into a piece the size of "The Tao of Chance." So I need to take some time to steel myself and psych myself up before I sit down to write this post. I'm very tempted to take the opposite tack, i.e., to condense my thoughts into a brief, two-paragraph review. But that would feel like cheating, and I wouldn't be able to explore the length and breadth of my thoughts on "Cloud Atlas."

So expect a massive review sometime in the near future. Not sure exactly when I'll get around to writing it, but I promise it will appear eventually, along with other promised pieces.


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the difference between K-pop and Western pop

Tweeter James Turnbull leads me to this snarkily humorous article* about the difference between K-pop and Western pop music. The article concludes:

K-pop is taking Western music, combining it with Western concepts, Western production, Western sonic trends, and Western psychological fangirl-baiting to create a popular culture trend based 100% entirely on Western culture. There are no fucking differences. That’s not good or bad, but that’s what it is and don’t let others tell you different.

The only thing Korean about it is that it’s happening in Korea, which means that the competition is tougher — they’re all trying harder than everyone else to create the perfect pop product because they’re culturally perfectionist workaholics who run on two hours sleep.

I don't disagree with anything that author kpopalypse wrote, but my own analysis of the difference between the two pop styles would be this:

K-pop is basically Western pop with the pitch cranked up to cartoon-voice level and the rhythm sped up to a frenetic, cocaine-crazed pace.

Like much of Korean pop culture, K-pop feels like a lighter, cheaper, more effete, and very derivative version of its sturdier, more original Western counterpart. Think about kitchen utensils. If you're from the West and you move to Korea, one of the first things you notice, when you go shopping for utensils to stock your kitchen, is that all the utensils are made of lighter, weaker, cheaper metals and plastics. Everything is more breakable and less substantial. That's K-pop in a nutshell: a lighter, fluffier, substance-free version of Western pop: easy on the brain (or, in my case, harsh on the ears) and completely unmemorable.

This isn't to say that I hate all modern Korean music. I've heard some pop songs that had a hint of substance to them—some singers with rough-edged, powerful voices, who didn't sound like the latest "Bristina" clone. I've heard some modern songs with heavier beats, slower tempos, and a more thoughtful sound overall, and I've appreciated them. But such songs are few and far between in Korea.

This also isn't to say that I necessarily find Western pop superior to K-pop. In general, I despise Western pop almost as much as I do K-pop; it's just that I grew up listening to Western pop, so I'm more used to it. I've never gotten used to modern Korean music.

So, basically, I'd argue that K-pop is the Pikachu-infused bastard child of Western pop: all cheek-lightning and high-pitched voices, possessing even less substance than Western pop does. It's auditory cotton candy—eminently consumable, but there and gone. I wish it would go away, but that's not happening anytime soon.

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*Not sure how much feminists will appreciate it, though, given its accusation that "fangirl idiocy" was and is one of the engines driving the entire pop movement. There's also the "erect dick to hop on" comment at the end. I found that comment funny, but that's because I don't have an anti-phallocratic stick up my ass.


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change of plan

I do my laundry by hand.

There's a washing machine in this yeogwan, I've been told, but I haven't had the heart to ask to use it. So I do my laundry by hand, third-world-style. It takes me about as long to do a full load of laundry as it takes the machine to do the same load; the main difference is that I can't wring the clothes as dry as the machine can spin them, which means the drying time for my hand-washed loads is necessarily rather long. Socks, tees, underwear, and shirts made of thin material are no problem to do by hand; pants—especially sweatpants—are, by contrast, a real bitch to hand-wash. Wringing out pants takes a good bit of muscle power, and I have to make sure not to twist too hard because otherwise I start popping stitches. So it's both strength and finesse that are needed, which makes hand-washing an activity that demands mindfulness. I can't say I love doing my laundry, but I do find it, to some extent, a meditative activity.

Right now, my clothes are drying. They've been drying for several hours, but the sweatpants are still soaked. Gravity helps dictate the drying pattern; I hang the clothes in front of a fan, and they dry from the top to the bottom. The yeogwan has its own fan, bolted high onto the wall; I've got a second electric fan—my own—which I've placed inside my tiny bathroom to dry the clothes that are hanging on the drying rack. Of course, I've got the air conditioning going full-blast to remove the humidity from the air; without the A/C, I'd be merely blowing the moisture around, and the clothes would dry only slowly. All of this requires a large amount of electricity, but luckily, I'm not being billed for utilities. Not yet, anyway: the day may come when a pissed-off yeogwan owner will track me down and demand that I pay W450,000 per month instead of W400,000 to compensate for the amount of electricity I'm using.

So after pondering the situation a bit, I've decided not to hit Namsan this evening. I feel guilty about not going, but I really have nothing I can wear for the hike. There's also the fact that, after the hike, I'd have to launder another set of clothes again, and after today's orgy of laundering activity, I don't think I could stand to do yet another load, however small.

Meanwhile, the mountain will be there for me. Mountains are faithful like that.


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Happy Birthday, David!

September 14 is by brother David's birthday. He's seven years younger than I am, which means he's now 38. David's doing fine and loving life: he's happily married and has the money to travel. His job has him doing things he enjoys, like making videos (by which I mean not merely filming segments but also editing sound, adding graphics, and otherwise producing the entire thing from stem to stern). He just got back from a business trip to Orlando, Florida; he sent me some pics on Kakao. I hope he had the chance to chow down on some Cuban sandwiches. Those look mighty tasty.

David loves Kakaoing me. Sometimes I find this annoying, but when I think about it, it's rather touching that David's first and last thoughts for the day go toward his big brother.

Happy Birthday, David! Enjoy the start of your 39th year. 40 isn't so far away.


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Ave, Joshua!

Joshua Stanton, blogging at One Free Korea, writes:

(My own belief is that U.S. Forces Korea is overdue to evolve into a command that provides air, naval, logistical, and intelligence support, as one part of a multilateral regional alliance. I’ve believed since I was a soldier in Korea that keeping U.S. ground forces there is a relic of 1960s doctrine. It puts tens of thousands of American soldiers and their families at excessive risk from a North Korean attack. American taxpayers carry too much of the burden of South Korea’s defense, and South Korea’s reliance on Uncle Sugar’s security blanket had created a false sense of security. South Korea will never be a self-confident and independent nation without greater self-sufficiency in its own defense. To achieve that, it should end its subsidies to North Korea, stop cutting its defense budget, improve its missile defenses, and build a big enough Army reserve component to stabilize North Korea if the regime collapses.

The US role in South Korea's defense should definitely be reduced. I've long advocated for the removal of our troops, who serve no practical purpose on the peninsula, and who are often objects of resentment, both justified and unjustified. South Korea has both the money and the might to stand on its own, but it may still be too steeped in a self-righteous victim mentality to take the mature step of accepting full responsibility for its own defense. As I've noted before, American force projection is such that we can be anywhere in the world within twenty-four hours; the need for bases in foreign countries is slowly but steadily disappearing, and this is particularly true in Korea. There's no doubt that, should a shooting war break out on the peninsula, America would be immediately by South Korea's side. But in the meantime, there's really no need for a "tripwire" force to guarantee American involvement.

Read the rest of Joshua's interesting post, which focuses on influence-peddling.


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18.3K

Tonight's walk, which did not include any "pre-walking" on campus (because I didn't have work today), was 18,294 steps. Drank a lot of water during the walk, so I probably gained weight instead of losing it. Climbing the hard slope tonight was more arduous than usual; there were a couple moments where I wanted simply to stop and rest, but instead I slowed my pace and kept on trudging upward.

A detached, analytical portion of my mind observes my huffing and puffing and sees the body for what it is: a machine. True, it's a living machine that articulates a human will, but this doesn't stop it from consuming oxygen at a certain rate, producing a certain amount of force per step, generating heat and sweat and moving to a certain rhythm as I forge my way upward. Sometimes, giving in to this analytical detachment is a good way to keep moving. Tonight, for example, when I was flagging, I had to unplug that lazy, emotional part of my mind and just let the machine take over, moving automatically and inexorably up the slope.

Same walk again tomorrow night. Or maybe I'll take the stairs this time.


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a milestone: 119.8 kg

Today, I dropped below 120 kilograms for the first time: 119.8 kg, or 264.2 pounds. As an American living in Korea, with two systems of weights and measures floating in my head, I'm never quite sure what to think of all the possible milestones at my disposal. I can set milestones in terms of pounds or kilograms; I can do so in five- or ten-kilo intervals, or five- or ten-pound intervals. Getting below 120 kilograms also puts me below the 265-pound mark, so maybe today represents the crossing of two boundaries, the establishment of two milestones. I'd say that I'm going to go out and celebrate by eating a pile of food, but I've committed myself to a Paleo-style day of starvation today, so I'll simply hike up Namsan tonight and eat something tomorrow.

I've read before that the human body needs about 12 calories of food per pound of body weight to maintain weight from day to day. At 264 pounds, that means I need to be eating about 3,168 calories per day. In fast-food terms, that's like two Whopper value meals. But I know for a fact that, were I to eat two such value meals a day, I would most certainly gain weight. My body seems designed to gain weight quickly and to lose weight only slowly, grudgingly.* Hence the relentless hiking. Not that I'm complaining: since I do enjoy walking, adding hiking back into my schedule is a welcome change of lifestyle.

I get paid by Dongguk in four days. The money doesn't come a moment too soon. I'm not sure when, exactly, the money from the Golden Goose will be arriving, but that payment, too, will be welcome, and I'll finally be on my way to reducing some debts.

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*Part of the problem is my poop cycle. Eating a meal doesn't take long, but getting rid of the poop generated by the meal takes forever, and by the time I've gotten rid of part of a meal, I've already eaten again, thus creating a negative feedback loop that leads to weight gain in the form of undigested (or unshat) food. The food just lingers in my bowels, which release the ass-babies only after much delay and grumbling.


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22.5K

Weight fluctuations can be amusing and frustrating. On the evenings that I don't do Namsan, my weight shoots up instantaneously. On the evenings that I do do Namsan, I either lose a tiny bit of weight or remain at the same weight. I was around 120 kg a few days ago; when I didn't walk up Namsan for two days straight, my weight instantly went up to 122 kg—a 4-pound gain. After tonight's walk, I'm back down to 120 kg again.

Tonight's walk was a little over 22.5K steps, i.e., over ten miles (16 km). I double-summited Namsan once more, again taking the steep "descending" bus route. By the end of the night, my monthly steps-per-day average had been restored to nearly 14K/day. I hope to do this again both Saturday and Sunday night. Whatever it takes to keep the weight down.


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Dr. Steve at 45

A fellow 69-er, my buddy-since-eighth-grade Dr. Steve turns 45 today. Steve's got a doctorate in modern American lit, and he teaches English at a college in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (where the movie "Signs" is set, if that does anything for you). Steve would visit me on occasion while I was living in Front Royal, Virginia; he'd normally be around for Thanksgiving, and sometimes even for Christmas, which was nice, since I now rarely celebrate big American holidays en famille. Ideologically, Steve and I are pretty far apart; he's quite a liberal while I consider myself much more middle-of-the-road (look up "political compass" in my blog's search window and see the posts where I've displayed my compass results). Secretly, Steve is a good cartoonist and amateur chef; more openly, he's a talented songwriter and guitar player, thereby conforming with the stereotypically hipster ideal he's shooting for. He's also a kind, caring soul, as well as an all-around decent fellow. Now that I'm in Korea again, my correspondence with Steve has slowed to a mere trickle, which is unfortunate, but we're both busy, so that can't be helped. Despite the distance, I still wish my friend a very happy 45th. Halfway to 90, I say!


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9/11

A mindful 9/11 to my fellow Americans.

Today marked a return to teaching, and I don't think the date resonated with any of my students. For better or worse, the date still resonates with me.


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a guilty break (and random notes)

I've reached the point, in my Namsan routine, where I now feel guilty if I take a break from hiking. Alas, that's what I have to do tonight after racking up only 7,000 steps today (3.1 miles, 475 calories): I simply have too much left to do in terms of lesson and curriculum planning. I can't afford to spend a few hours on the path tonight. So, since the weekend is coming up, I plan to make up for lost time by doing nothing but double-summiting for the next few days. Once the planning is done and I've gotten my kids to run on autopilot, I'll have little to do except act as a guide and facilitator, which will free up loads of time for me to just go walking, and maybe to throw in some strength training.

Today, September 10, also happens to be my goddaughter's birthday. She's seventeen. Damn, how time flies. I still remember when she was a toddler, and here she is, agonizing over what college to attend. Her little sis just got her learner's permit, and the youngest sibling, my buddy Mike's son, is doubtless champing at the bit and impatient to get driving, too. Won't be long before the kids all leave the nest and my best friend's house in Fredericksburg, Virginia becomes eerily, sadly quiet.

But that's the future. For the moment, it's back to curriculum planning.

UPDATE: Check out this Tumblr photo by Robert Koehler of a path on the west side of Namsan—one I've never seen before. I'm going to have to find this path and walk it.


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Chuseok: Chinatown in pictures

As is my wont, I spent my Chuseok avoiding relatives in favor of doing something with friends. My outing was all too brief, as I had to get back to my place and work on syllabi and other curricular materials, but I did get the chance to go out to Incheon's little Chinatown and eat some atypical Chinese food with my buddy Tom, his wife, and Tom's friend Angelo, whom I had met last year during my job search.

Here are some pics from yesterday's outing. Chinatown, which I'd never been to before, turned out to be about as large as the tiny Chinatown in Washington, DC, near Gallery Place. Click on the "landscape" pictures to make them full size; no need to click on the "portrait"-style images. Hover your cursor over the images to see the captions.

Chinatown's main gate

main street

fancy manhole cover

a restaurant?

stairway to mystery

inward we go

Tom pushing son Thomson along; behind are friend Angelo and Tom's wife Sherny

fu dog having a stretch

Lunch was at a very large Chinese restaurant whose menu was disappointingly Sino-Korean. I tried the most unfamiliar-looking thing on the menu: hayan-jjajang, i.e., white jjajang-myeon. Normally, jjajang-myeon is chewy pasta in black-bean sauce (see here), but the "white" sauce (it was actually more clear than white), while bland, was pretty good. Here's a pic of some hayan-jjajang that's similar to what I ate. I liked it despite all the onions.

All too soon, I had to get back to my place, so I left Tom and the gang to go visit Weolmido without me. I don't think I missed much: I'd been to Weolmido before. If there's one thing I do want to try the next time I come back to Chinatown, however, it's the hwadeok-mandu: thick-skinned potstickers cooked in what looks to be a tandoor (hwadeok is Korean for "oven" or "hearth"; see here). That looked way more fascinating (not to mention tastier) than the food we eventually ate, and I wouldn't have minded engaging in a street-food walking tour of Chinatown, sampling the cheap goodies the district had to offer.

One last thing: Angelo has an impish sense of humor. An avid photographer, he took the following candid shot of me and Tom sitting together during the long subway ride from Seoul to Incheon. Using his smartphone's editing software, he, uh, accented the picture to make the Kirk/Spock man-love subtext more obvious. I look incredibly huge—and neckless—next to my compact buddy, but candid shots provide a sobering reality check that my own chin-hiding selfies tend to obscure. It's obvious I've still got a long, long way to go in terms of weight loss. Anyway, the result of Angelo's artistic efforts:

Ha ha. Mock away, Angelo. I think you're just jealous.

16,999 + 2,540 = 19,539

What a lame supermoon. Seoul got gypped by Mother Nature: the night was way too cloudy, and the clouds dimmed almost all of the cosmic luster I had been hoping for. The moon just looked like a regular moon to me as I hiked up Namsan tonight.

I started my hike late, having done a wee bit of walking earlier in the day. As a result, I didn't get back to my hovel until after midnight. Before midnight, I had managed 16,999 steps; after midnight, it took another 2,540 steps to get me to my bed. That's a rough total of 19.5K steps for a single hiking session, but the way my pedometer divides things up (it always resets at midnight), my monthly average will be calculated based on my having done almost 17K steps on Monday.

Today, Tuesday, I'm off to the Golden Goose for five hours of make-up work (I came in late last Wednesday because I'd had to spend all day at Immigration), then I give the Goose my full eight hours on Wednesday. My free time will be spent finishing up syllabi and lesson plans, so as I may have said earlier, this isn't much of a break for yours truly.

In other news: just eight more days to go before I get paid. Can't wait.


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